Local SEO, how much additional information to fill out beyond NAP

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Bob,

I like VZpro's answer on this one. One area I always try to take advantage of is that some directories allow for a much longer business description than others. At the beginning of a citation campaign, I write descriptions of different lengths so that I have them at the ready for using on the different platforms. Those longer description field allow for a very robust (and optimized) description of the business, so that's something I never pass up.

[BobGW]

Thanks Miriam,

One question: If I have descriptions ready wouldn't I run into duplicate content issues? But my original question has completely been answered, very happy with the feedback here.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,

That is such a good question. Honestly, I've asked myself that very question, too. What about duplicate content? I welcome the opportunity to share my thinking with you on this and hope you'll tell me if this sounds like good horse sense to you:

When you create a listing at one of the major data providers, it is going to automatically create additional listings on the sites it feeds data to. These auto-created listings will be identical in nearly every way, including the description you've provided. There is no way around this except to avoid listing your company on these major providers (which no sane person would want to avoid doing, right?)

So, the way that data is aggregated and shared, you cannot avoid what might be called duplicate content. Every local business with a citation profile has identical descriptions attached to these kinds of listings, and if there was a penalty involved, it would be affecting all of them, right? And I've never seen any indication of a penalty. Now, there's a chance I could be wrong about this, but my guess is that Google would be sophisticated enough to know that this type of duplication is baked into the way data is shared between the various indexes.

What do you think about that? I'd value your feedback. It's something I've wondered about, as I've said, but I've never taken the time to bring it up amongst peers.

[DarinPirkey]

I asked this question to Matt Cutts on Google Moderator.

https://www.google.com/moderator/#8/e=20ce74

[KaneJamison]

My 2 cents: I don't think this would affect the small business at all. It would be an issue when comparing two internet yellow page aggregators - they're the ones that lose out because the duplicate content makes their page less likely to rank than Yelp or another large IYP that features the same content.

[MiriamEllis]

Cool. Please follow up if you get a reply, vzPRO.

[DarinPirkey]

Will do.

[BobGW]

I think I need more information to answer that, Mariam. I would need to know how a quality local company that does no local SEO naturally would gain citation descriptions (if they would at all) to be able to answer that.

Whatever is closest to natural would be my guess to emulate.If it's natural for a company to have very few or no unique descrptions then I'd say we are totally OK using the same ones.

I know they are scraped but five to ten different descriptions scraped is different than one to three. Maybe naturally one to three is normal

I'd be interested to know your thoughts.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,

A citation campaign is going to generate a lot more than 2-3 duplicate listings. Just a glance at GetListed.org's Local Search Eco-system shows how much data is fed, scraped, shared:

http://getlisted.org/resources/local-search-data-providers.aspx

My point being, it's just baked into the system. Think about when people use a service like Localeze and the distribution that occurs from that. I agree with you that naturalness is generally desirable, but directory inclusion isn't really a spontaneous and natural occurrence (like reviews are supposed to be). It's a planned action on the part of a business. So, I'm just not sure what natural would look like in this scenario. Know what I mean?

Appreciate your reply, Bob!

[BobGW]

If it's always a planned action then I don't know. If none of the experts have noticed a difference then perhaps it doesn't matter. Maybe something to keep in mind in case one day things change. Thanks Miriam